This Leadership Masterclass series has been designed so that you can attend one, or both events - it's up to you!

Facilitated by internationally recognised leadership experts from the highly regarded team at Cultivating Leadership, this part of our Leadership Masterclass Series captures the heart of what Best Places to Work™ and Cultivating Leadership are all about: growing leadership from the inside out.

Together, the masterclasses offer a deep, human-centred approach to leadership development - helping you align your internal capability with the evolving demands of today’s world. You’ll walk away with greater clarity, confidence, and connection - and the ability to lead with real impact. And that’s exactly what it takes to shape and sustain New Zealand’s Best Places to Work™.

True leadership doesn’t start in a team meeting, or the boardroom. It starts from within. That’s because we only lead to the level of complexity we can make sense of within ourselves.

Part one of our two-part Leadership Masterclass series focuses on ‘Inner Leadership’ - the self-awareness, mindset and agility needed to lead with clarity, resilience and purpose.

Given leaders today face new levels of uncertainty and challenges that traditional leadership skills and tools can’t always meet, this Masterclass will help expand your leadership capacity - uplifting your ability to hold more, see more, and lead more effectively. By creating space between who you are and how you show up, you’ll gain real choice in how you lead, rather than just reacting to what’s happening around you.

Together, we will step back from the action to observe how, and when old mindsets, behaviours, and patterns are getting in the way of the good things you want to create. You'll explore new ways of thinking, challenge old or unhelpful patterns, and leave with the clarity to understand why some situations feel hard, as well as the capacity to respond to them with greater intention and impact.

Through practical tools, reflective practice, and experiential learning, this workshop will help you grow your leadership presence and unlock new levels of freedom and confidence.

Why attend?

Expand your ability to lead through uncertainty with agility.
Strengthen your resilience under pressure and navigate constraints more effectively.
Lead with greater authenticity, clarity, and purpose.
Shift your mindset and practices to match the complexity of your leadership situation.
Increase your ability to influence others.

You’ll learn ways to:

Show up with greater impact by adapting your mindset and strategies to suit the moment.
Build stronger, more productive relationships with your team, stakeholders, and customers.
Recognise when your strengths become limitations and adjust your leadership approach to match the challenge.

Facilitators

Facilitated by internationally respected leadership experts, the day is led by the Cultivating Leadership team - known for their deep, human approach to growing leaders in complexity.

Leanne Holdsworth

Leanne stands for a future where it is normal for work environments to be places where human beings thrive, enabling organisations to succeed whilst at the same time, building social capital through how those humans are able to show up with their families and communities.

She is the co-author of Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanising workplaces and author of the book A New Generation of Business Leaders and has spent 15 years advising organisations predominantly in the private sector (across most sectors including banking, primary sector, FMCG, tech, pharmaceuticals) as well as the public and not for profit sectors in sustainability strategy and leadership.

Geoff Harrison

Geoff believes that leadership is both learned and co-created, and that the conditions necessary for leadership to emerge can be actively cultivated. He feels that in our increasingly complex world, the leadership patterns and behaviours that brought success today will need to evolve to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Using experiential and action learning techniques, Geoff helps leaders develop the self-awareness and interpersonal skills necessary for leading high performance teams, those with the capacity to grow and thrive while operating under conditions of complexity, risk, and uncertainty.

Geoff has over 15 years’ experience helping individuals and organisations identify and re-frame issues that can derail effective team performance. He specialises in designing and delivering innovative developmental learning experiences and has had the opportunity to work with leaders in a variety of venues ranging from boardrooms to snowy mountaintops.

Speakers

Stew Darling
Stew spent more than 20 years as a senior officer in the British military, leading in high-stakes, high-pressure environments around the world. Today, he brings that same clarity, discipline, and systems thinking to executive teams across Aotearoa and beyond.

He is the founder of Unstoppable Force, a global leadership and performance consultancy. Here, Stew partners with CEOs and senior leaders to strengthen their mindsets, build resilience, and lead cultural change. His approach combines strategic precision with performance science, helping leaders cut through complexity and perform under pressure without burning out.

With experience spanning New Zealand, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe, Stew brings a truly global perspective to the challenges of modern leadership. He’s known for his ability to simplify the complex, shift mindsets, and spark real transformation, from the inside out.

Steven Zinsli

Steven is the founder and CEO of Extraordinary, the employee card for all payments beyond payroll. He helps organisations simplify non-payroll payments, deliver benefits efficiently, and elevate their employer brand—replacing gift cards, slow reimbursements, and disconnected prepayments with a smarter, controlled system.

Before Extraordinary, Steven scaled a clinical business to 120 staff across 15 locations, gaining experience in operational efficiency and building culture at scale. A lifelong learner, he draws inspiration from leaders like Steve Jobs and Jocko Willink, and balances work with reading, training, and exploring what drives extraordinary outcomes.